By Editor,Emily Stearn

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Experts hit back at highly contentious study claiming Covid vaccine raises risk of SIX cancers including breast and prostate

READ MORE: Pharmacists besieged after Trump’s unfounded vaccines claims

By EMILY STEARN, SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER

Published: 16:56 BST, 29 September 2025 | Updated: 16:56 BST, 29 September 2025

Covid vaccines may raise the risk of certain cancers, a highly contentious study has claimed.

Korean researchers said they found proof the jabs raised the risk of six types of cancer including lung, breast and prostate.

The risk appeared greatest for over-65s, they wrote in a journal owned by a respected scientific publisher.

But they did not explain exactly why the jabs may have increased this risk.

Experts today dismissed the study labelling it ‘superficially alarming’ and warned its conclusions were hugely overblown.

The link between Covid jabs and cancer has previously been dismissed by academics and oncologists after claims it had led to ‘turbo cancers’.

Scientists have long warned that there is no credible evidence that these vaccines disrupt tumour suppressors or drive any kind of process that results in cancer.

It also comes as Reform UK last week distanced itself from Aseem Malholtra, an adviser to US health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, who suggested at its conference that Covid jabs were linked to the King and Princess of Wales’ cancers.

Korean researchers said they found proof the jabs raised the risk of six types of cancer including lung, breast and prostate

The study was authored by Korean medics in orthopedic surgery and critical care, who analysed the health records of more than 8.4million adults between 2021 and 2023

The fresh study was published in the journal Biomarker Research, owned by Springer Nature which produces some of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals.

It was authored by Korean medics in orthopedic surgery and critical care, who analysed the health records of more than 8.4million adults between 2021 and 2023.

Participants were categorised into two groups based on whether they had taken a Covid vaccine including a booster.

Cancer diagnosis rates were then compared against vaccination status to determine the risk of certain cancers a year after taking the jab.

They hypothesised that after a year, those who had taken at least one Covid jab had a 35 per cent increased risk of being diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 34 per cent risk of gastric cancer.

This risk rose to 53 and 68 per cent for lung and prostate cancers respectively.

Breast and colorectal cancers, meanwhile, had an increased risk of 20 and 28 per cent respectively, the medics claimed.

Writing in the journal, they said ‘cDNA vaccines were associated with the increased risks of thyroid, gastric, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers’.

A 2022 study led by academics at Imperial College London suggests almost 20million lives were saved by Covid vaccines in the first year since countries began rolling out the jabs, the majority in wealthy nations

There are no official, widely-available cDNA-based COVID vaccines on the market.

mRNA vaccines, such as those made by Pfizer and Moderna, were ‘linked to the increased risks of thyroid, colorectal, lung, and breast cancers’, the authors added.

‘Vaccinated males were more vulnerable to gastric and lung cancers, whereas vaccinated females were more susceptible to thyroid and colorectal cancers.’

However, they didn’t explain why exactly the vaccines could raise this risk.

Although it is now widely acknowledged that some Covid vaccines had significant side-effects, including some serious heart conditions, the claim that they are linked to cancer remains controversial.

Cancer Research UK says there is ‘no good evidence’ of any link between the jabs and cancer.

The charity also points out that mRNA technology is being used to develop new jabs that are showing promise in actually preventing lung, ovarian and other types of cancer.

The Office for National Statistics has previously said that it does not believe tens of thousands of excess deaths in the UK in 2022-23, which were attributed to vaccine-related cancer by some commentators, were actually caused by the jab.

It also comes as Reform UK last week distanced itself from Aseem Malholtra, an adviser to US health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, who suggested at its conference that Covid jabs were linked to the King and Princess of Wales’ cancers

Responding to the study’s findings, Dr Benjamin Mazer, an assistant professor of pathology at John Hopkins University, said: ‘No carcinogen can induce cancer that quickly. Mutations take time to accumulate and cells take time to replicate.

‘The outcome measured is not the development of cancer but the diagnosis of cancer.

‘Once a cancer develops in the body, it still takes time for it to come to the attention of the patient and healthcare system.

‘How could anything possibly cause a cancer to not only grow but grow large enough to be detected in a matter of days?’

He also pointed to data published earlier this year by the Official Journal of Korean Cancer Association regarding cancer cases in Korea until 2022.

Figures show no increase in cases among the six cancers flagged in the study as being affected by the vaccines.

‘Since the population was widely immunized by this point and the effect supposedly occurs near-instantly, this real-world data is highly contradictory,’ Dr Mazer said.

It comes as Aseem Malhotra, an advisor to the Robert Kennedy, earlier this month claimed the Covid vaccines were linked to the King’s and the Princess of Wales’ cancers.

Dr Mazer also pointed to data published earlier this year by the Official Journal of Korean Cancer Association regarding cancer cases in Korea until 2022

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that it was ‘shockingly irresponsible’ of Reform to allow Dr Malholtra at the conference

Speaking at Reform UK’s conference, he said: ‘One of Britain’s most eminent oncologists Professor Angus Dalgleish said to me to share with you today that he thinks it’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers in the royal family.’

In his speech in Birmingham, at an event titled ‘Make Britain Healthy Again’, Dr Malholtra also claimed that studies show that mRNA vaccines could alter genes.

Dr Malhotra, a cardiologist, also said taking the Covid vaccine was more likely to cause harm than the virus itself.

But his claims attracted widespread criticism, with Professor Brian Ferguson, professor of viral immunology at the University of Cambridge, arguing: ‘There is no credible evidence that these vaccines disrupt tumour suppressors or drive any kind of process that results in cancer.

‘It is particularly crass to try to link this pseudoscience to the unfortunate incidents of cancer in the royal family.’

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that it was ‘shockingly irresponsible’ of Reform to allow Dr Malholtra at the conference.

The party said that it ‘does not endorse what he said but does believe in free speech’.

In 2023, Springer Nature was forced to apologise and retract a contentious study in one of its journals BMC Infectious Diseases, after it wrongly claimed Covid vaccines have killed up to 280,000 people across the US.

The paper which was authored by an economist at Michigan State University, was jumped on by anti-vaxx groups across the planet.

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Experts hit back at highly contentious study claiming Covid vaccine raises risk of SIX cancers including breast and prostate

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